Category Archives: Breakfast

I love semolina !!! I love each and every preparation made with semolina . I don’t think there is any Bengali who doesn’t like mohonbhog- the Bengali delicacy . The difference between mohonbhog and regular sooji halwa is , mohonbhog is drier than halwas . Ghee needs to be separated before you stop cooking it . Texture though dry but should be moist with ghee and should not be mushy .. If you squeeze a little with your finger, you will feel them grainy – “Dana dana jhorjhore ” .. 🙂 sorry couldn’t get any proper English term to describe . 🙂
Many use milk in mohonbhog , but I at my home my mom never used milk making mohonbhog . because milk makes the semolina mushy. I still remember the taste of Mohonbhog of Old Dhaka’s Moronchand sweets . Oh!!! How flavorful mohonbhog can be . Many a time we used to go to Moronchand early in the morning to grab some luchi and mohonbhog . The earlier the better , lest you don’t get any mohonbhog left for you !!! Miss those days !!! Miss Moronchand Sweetmeat , miss mohonbhog !!!!!
For mohonbhog coarse semolina is perfect . But now in New York , the semolina is too fine , even the coarse one looks like powdered !!! Please use coarse semolina to get the correct texture and again the ratio of sugar , semolina and water is very important .

Smörgåstårta is a Scandinavian , more specifically Swedish savory sandwich cake . It has several layers , most often , the bread used is light rye bread and layered with seafood , chicken , ham , bakon , egg , frosted with a creamy frosting and decorated with vegetables , seafood , egg or any food of your choice .

Now a days it has several versions . Use your imagination and taste bud to create this edible, beautiful piece of art . 🙂

Ingredients :

8 slices of sandwich bread
Lettuce leaves
Fillings

Filling # 1 :

Avacado and chicken salad :

Cut one avocado and scoop out the flesh . Mash well . Add some shredded chicken and mustard sauce in it . Sprinkle some salt if you wish . Ready .

1. You can add cream cheese in the frosting or can make the frosting with only cream cheese and sour cream . For that take 1 cup of cream cheese with half cup of sour cream and 2 tbl spoon of icing sugar together and beat well until creamy . Cream cheese should be of room temperature .

2. For the filling , you canuse tuna , egg or anything of your choice .

In Bangladesh , a special type of paratha is being served in the roadside local restaurants – known as “hotel” , soft , less oil , doesn’t get soggy , long after it is fried . Most of the time , this paratha is termed as “sheka/ cheka paratha” . These parathas are crumpled or clapped by the hands immediately they are being fried to release the layers . This clapping of parathas is not an easy task for many of us , as it is considered to be an art !!! Here you go with a little secret , crumple the parathas without burning your hands !! Just put one one hot paratha ( just after frying) into a closed box and shake , shake , shake !!! Shake vigorously for few a times and you get that crumpled parathas !!! Same effect as you get by clapping them by your hands . 🙂

1. Make a medium soft dough with the ingredients mentioned above . You may need little more water or milk to get that soft dough . Knead for 1 or two minutes . Don’t knead too much . Cover the dough with a damp cheese cloth and place it on a slightly greased box . Close the box and let the dough rest for minimum 1 hour .

2. After 1 hour , you will find the dough to be very stretchy . That’s the dough we want . 🙂 Now dust your hand with flour and make small balls . You will get 5 or 6 parathas from this recipe .

3. Roll each ball on a slightly flour dusted surface . Don’t put too much flour to knead them . Roll the ball into a large roti. Apply shortening / dalda/ ghee generously all over it . Now make a cut in the middle and try to roll them like a cone like the pic .

Now press the cone and roll the paratha out .

4. Heat the pan or skillet. Add the paratha and fry both side lightly until the color changes to white . Now apply 1 tea spoon of oil over paratha . Rub them all over . Don’t put any oil in the pan , just over the paratha . Turn over and apply the same to the other side of paratha .

5. Crumple the parathas by your hand immediately you remove them from the pan . As I said earlier , the clapping of parathas is bit difficult for many of us . So take a box, put the hot paratha into the box close it and shake vigorously for few times .

Heat butter and fry the chopped onin and garlic for a minute . Add the chopped spinach . Don’t add any extra water . The leaves will release water . Add little salt . When the water is almost dried out add the mashed potato . Stir and then add the cottage cheese .

When cool , mix the cream cheese with it .

Procedure:

1. Mix all the ingredients for bun except oil . Be careful while adding luke warm milk and water . If you use too hot water the yeast might get killed , and if you use room temperature or cold water, the yeast won’t wake up !!!!!! In both case the dough will not rise and everything will go in vain . So always use luke warm water in any recipe where you have yeast as an ingredient. Make a soft dough . If you make the dough hard , the bun will be hard , so make it a soft dough .

2. Knead well . The dough will be very sticky . Now add the oil and form the dough into a round ball . Now it’s easier to work with the dough. Knead very well . The more you knead, the softer bun you get . Knead at least 8-10 minutes .Put the dough into a closed lid box and place it in a warm place . It may take an hour or more to get the dough double in volume . If it becomes fluffy and double in volume , the dough is ready to make the bun. Sometimes it may get longer time to rise . Sometimes it takes almost 2 and half hour to rise up and to be fluffy . So don’t do anything until it rise up in volume and becomes fluffy .

3. Punch down all the air form the dough . Now Make balls from the dough . Flatten the ball and put some filling into it. Reshape the ball . Make all the buns like this . All of them should be of same size .

4. Grease a springform or any other pan . and place the balls closely to each other . Cover with a wet cloth for 20 minutes and let it rise again a bit . In the mean time pre-heat your oven to 400 FH or 200 Centigrade.

5. Brush with egg and sprinkle some sesame and nigella seed . Bake for not more than 20 minutes at 400 FH in a pre heated oven . If you bake for longer , the buns will be hard .

6. After taking out from oven rub some butter on it for a smooth and glossy finishing .

I make warqi paratha in 3 different ways . The first method being the best and most authentic though involves little hard work and it will take little time too.

Procedure # 1:

1. Make a medium soft dough with the ingredients mentioned above . Cover it with a wet cloth and let the dough rest for 30 minutes .

2. Make balls from the dough and roll the balls into small rotis or disks . Rub each rotis with the ghee-flour mixture.

3. Stack the rotis together . The last roti should be put inward way , so that the ghee covered part is on inside . Join them together . Roll them into a big roti.

4. Now apply the ghee-flour mixture on the roti . Roll it like a swiss roll . Cut the roll into 3″ pieces . Flatten the pieces by pressing them upright . Now stack three or four of these flatten pieces together . Roll out the paratha .

Here’s the step by step Pic :

5. Fry the parathas without ghee/oil first . Then heat some ghee ( you will need more than the quantity usually needed for frying parathas) and fry the parathas on medium low heat . Please be careful frying these , since they are kind of melt in mouth type , if not carefully handled , you may break the parathas .

Procedure # 2:

1. Make the balls from the dough and roll them out into small rotis . Apply ghee-flour mixtue over each roti and stack them together .

1. . Mix flour with sugar , salt , powder milk , yeast, soda,beaten egg, yogurt and garlic .now add the oil and incorporate with kneading. Knead for a while . Knead very well . Make a smooth dough and rub the dough with little oil. Put it in a closed box and keep it in a warm place for 1 hour or until it doubles up!

2.Punch down all the air from the dough and make small balls from it.

3. Take one ball and try to make shapes with your hand . Don’t use any extra flour . You may dust your hand and the surface of the rolling board with flour to work comfortably. Don’t shape too thick .Add some chopped garlic and cilantro on the surface of the naan . Press some sesame seeds over them . After shaping , cover them with a wet cheese cloth for 15 minutes to rise up a bit .

4.Heat the Tawa as hot as possible and place the naan there. .. It may take 1/ 2 minutes to get one side done..Flip it over and cook the other side.The flame should be at medium high.

5. After removing from tawa rub the hot naan with butter.That would make your naan softer and also keep them softer for a longer time .

Tips:

1. You can make naan in oven too at 400 Fahrenheit . But to tell you honestly , naans made on stove r softer and tastier if you compare it with oven made naans and stove made naans stay softer for a longer period of time.

2. If you want to keep them softer , cover the warm naan in cheese cloth or foil to keep the moisture for a longer period!!!!!!!!!

3. Always remember too much hot water or milk always kills the yeast . So the water or milk should be luke warm . Neither hot nor cold or room temperature !!!! And salt also kills yeast . But at the same time sugar or honey is the key ingredient to activate yeast . If you don’t have yeast at home you may try using yogurt instead of yeast ! You have to keep the dough for a longer time for fermentation!!!!:)

My mom is an amazing cook. She had so many recipes of her own but to us never appeared to be “special” as we grew up eating those and thus making them very ordinary ; well,until I started taking interest in cooking . My mom used to make a paratha , which is deep fried and goes so well with kababs and curry, which after a long time , I came to know to be “poori-paratha” . My mom never used this term , but after I had this in a Pakistani restaurant , named as Poori-paratha, I realized , what a great cook my mom is !!!!!!!!!!!

Poori-Paratha is a paratha , deep fried like pooris. They are much thicker than luchi or even poori . My version is quite a bit different as I made them layered . so now, let’s move on to our recipe .

1. Combine all the ingredients and make a medium soft dough . Knead very well . The more you knead , the better your poori paratha is . Rub the dough with oil and cover it with a wet cheese cloth for at least half n hour .

2. After half n hour , the dough would be very strachy . Now take 3 balls from the dough .

3. Roll each dough with oil . Don’t take any extra dry flour to roll them out . Roll them with oil as thin as possible .

4. Make a paste using 2 tblspoon ghee and 2 tbl spoon flour . Rub the paste over the roti .

5. Fold them lengthwise and then again rub the ghee-flour paste .

6. Now fold from other two ends and shape it as a square .

7. Roll them with oil into a square paratha . It sould not be too thick nor thin like luchi or poori . A little thicker than usual poori .Don’t use any flour rolling them out . They should be rolled on oil only .

8. Deep fry and serve with kabab, curry or enjoy them even as it is . 🙂

This version of keema paratha is almost very similar to Muglai paratha, the only difference being it without egg and unlike muglai , it can be frozen as well ( before frying) , 🙂 . So you can entertain yourself , your family or even the guests anytime with this lovely , very crispy and “yummy in my tummy” parathas . 🙂

Heat oil and add chicken pieces or prepared keema and veggies . Fry for a while,add the chopped onion, green chilies and chopped mint and cilantro . Add the cheese . Turn off the stove . The onion will be half done with the heat the chicken already got . The half done onion will give an extremely nice flavor .. 🙂

For shredded chicken , just boil chicken breast pieces with little minced ginger, salt, few whole black pepper and very little minced garlic . When it’s done , you can easily tear off the chicken pieces .
For prepared beef keema , boil the keema with ginger, garlic paste and soy sauce till it’s completely dried out .
Now make your filling with above mentioned recipe . 🙂 You can use your left over chicken or beef to make this filling . 🙂

For the Paratha dough :

This quantity is for two parathas:

Ingredients:

All purpose flour 1 cup ( in a 250 ml cup)
Oil 2 tblspoon
Semolina or sooji 1 tbl spoon
Salt to taste
Sugar 1 teaspoon
Baking powder half teaspoon
Water , just enough to make a medium hard dough ( it must not be too soft or too tight)

Other ingredients:

Ghee (to rub over paratha and fry)
Cream cheese ( to rub over the paratha, this is optional)

Procedure:

1. For the dough , mix maida, baking powder, salt, sugar and oil . That’s what we call “moyan” . Now add enough room temperature water to make a medium hard dough . Just enough to make the dough come out from the bowl. Knead well .Cover it with a warm cheese cloth and keep aside for atleast 30 minutes . The dough will be softer and stretchy.You can make two round ball from it .

2. Take one ball and roll out as thin as possible . But don’t use any flour , while rolling it out . Rub some oil over the rolling pin and the rolling board and roll out the ball into a thin roti . Now apply some ghee or cream cheese over the roti and put some filling over it .

1. Make a medium soft dough by flour, salt , sugar and milk or water . Knead very well . The more you knead, the better is the out come . Now add 1 tbl spoon of ghee into the dough and knead again very well . After a good kneading , rub the dough with oil or ghee and cover it with a warm cheesecloth for half n hour . The dough should be very smooth and glossy.

2. After half n hour , the dough will be softer and very stretchy. Now make small balls from the dough and knead the balls . Working with one ball at a time , roll the ball into a thin roti or disk . Rub some ghee and dry out the ghee applying flour. keep aside.

3. Make at least five roti like this and on each roti rub ghee and dry out the ghee with dry flour .

4. Stack the roti together . The last roti should be put inward way , so that the ghee covered part is on inside . Join them together . Roll them into a big thin roti.

5. Cut the roti in strips.

6. Fold the strip and roll , then put this roll on another strip ; take at least 3 strips to make one paratha . If you want to make bigger size or more layered , you may take more strips for one paratha.

7. Rub some ghee on your rolling pin and also on the rolling board . Press them a little and roll them into paratha .

8. Heat the pan and fry the parathas first without any oil . After frying all of them without oil , fry them with oil or ghee on medium low heat until golden and crispy.

2. For the dough , mix maida, semolina(sooji), baking powder, salt, sugar and oil . That’s what we call “moyan” . Now add enough room temperature water to make a medium hard dough . Just enough to make the dough come out from the bowl. Knead well .Cover it with a warm cheese cloth and keep aside for atleast 30 minutes . The dough will be softer and stretchy. Make two balls from the dough .

Triangle Paratha #1:

1. Take one ball and try to roll it into a thin square shape . apply some ghee over it and dry the ghee with some dry flour . That would help to create flaky effect .

2. Put some filling .

3. Now cover the filling by one side of the paratha lengthwise or just try to make a cone .

4. Cover by the other side too .

5. Seal the remaining outer end with cream cheese or ghee.

6. Heat the frying pan and fry the paratha without oil just like roti . When done add some ghee and fry on medium heat . That would make the paratha crisp .

if you have more than one paratha , fry them all without oil first then add oil and fry one by one .

Layered Triangle Paratha:

1. Roll the other ball into a thin round disk . .

2. Apply some ghee over it and dry out the ghee with some flour.

3. Fold the disk into a semi circle. Rub ghee and then again dry out the ghee with flour.

4. Fold again and you will see a triangle shape.

5. Now Roll the triangle little larger . Try to adjust the shape with the help of your hands.

6. Fry the paratha on a heated pan/tawa without oil . Transfer it to a plate . You will see some pockets in the paratha . Apply some cream cheese or ghee in each pocket with a butter knife. Fill in each pockets with the filling.

8. Transfer it to the heated tawa or pan . add some ghee or oil and fry on medium heat until crispy.

Enjoy!!!!!!!!!

Note:

The beauty of this recipe is , you can preserve the semi-cooked parathas in refrigerator just like frozen parathas and just fry them in oil whenever you want . To make them frozen, fry them without oil or ghee after making them . Then let them cool . Pack with aluminium foil or cling film , store them in the deep chamber!